Typepad outage

Typepad experienced a major outage yesterday that took Mental Mayhem out of action for over a day. Of course, I was peeved. I felt like a mother with a sick child. Things are getting back to normal now, although I have to do some tweaking to do, like re-uploading some missing images. I had been hailing Typepad for a while now, telling people how wonderful the blogging service is. I guess I jinxed them. Next time, I will just keep my mouth shut.

It is the weekend here, so blogging will be a bit less than usual, as I have to take care of some house chores and last-minute Christmas shopping. However, I will do my best to bring this blog up to "normal" status. Happy blogging everyone and happy holidays!

Mental Mayhem site updates

In addition to featuring recent comments to posts on Mental Mayhem (MM) in the sidebar, I have also added a section to show the most recent comments from Newswire so as to better highlight discussions that take place there. Click here to see what’s shaking next door.

I would also like to draw your attention to a unique guest registry, which can be
found here in the sidebar’s geographic statistics section. The idea is built upon a guestbook, but visitors here cannot only leave a short message but also "pin" their geographic location on a world map so all of us can get a better idea of from whence you came. Even if you don’t leave a message, put a pin on the guestmap.

That’s it for now. More features are in the works. Please let me know what you think, or drop admin a note if you encounter anything that’s not working properly. Stay tuned.

The weather girl was right!

Rain in Doha from our windowsillThe weather girl was right. She predicted rain, a rarity in Doha, and it happened! Here is a picture from our kitchen window of this uncommon occurrence. Click it for an enlargement where you can almost make out what proved to be a downpour.

For those who haven’t met the weather girl, click here to go down below the “Blogs I’m following” section. Here you’ll find an animated icon that predicts the weather in Doha, or where ever you desire once you set it up. The cool thing about this weather girl is that she changes her attire according to the temperature. Last night she was holding an umbrella. How cool is that?

New features

A quick announcement: New features have been added to Mental Mayhem (many thanks to hubby). Those features include a search, which can be found right beneath the webpoll, a live chat that allows you to leave me notes without an email client or login. It’s found above Media Hub. And a hit map, showing the locations of visitors to the blog. The hit map is down at the bottom of the sidebar.

Stay tuned for more features in the near future.

Newswire is finally here!

Ok ladies and gentlemen, Newswire is finally on-line and ready for your perusal. There is now a permanent link for it on the sidebar of this blog under the “Special Features” section. Both the husband and I will be posting near-daily (hopefully) a number of news articles we find interesting, unique, or odd. We would really appreciate having you draw our attention to any new items you come across that seem worth highlighting.

The idea of ‘newswire’ came to life after Jeff realized that on a daily basis the two of us recommend to one another a huge assortment of articles from different sources. Why do we do that? Well, we are news junkies and proud to be. Anyway, the husband thought it would be a great idea if we aggregated them in one place and since we already have this domain, then why not?

Your feedback, suggestions and constructive criticism will be highly appreciated.

Enjoy!